Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Milton Caniff and the Air Force... Both My Father's and Mine

This month's issue of Air Force Magazine has a wonderful article about cartoonist Milton Caniff, a man who was a daily read for me from about the third grade until well into my adult years. Here's an example of his work, from a time before my time:

In the most famous Caniff Sunday page of all time, the “Let’s Take a
Walk, Terry” segment on Oct. 17, 1943, Corkin walks around the flight
line with newly fledged pilot Terry and delivers an inspirational talk
about the war and the Air Force.This page, often reprinted, was “read”
into the Congressional Record and appeared as an Air Force Magazine
guest editorial in September 1985.

As the caption notes... that's a lot o' mileage for a simple comic strip. That particular strip is an example of "Terry and the Pirates," but my boyhood hero was Steve Canyon, Caniff's follow-on strip after "Terry." Somehow or other I just KNEW my father and Col. Canyon knew each other... I had zero doubts about that until I got somewhat older and obtained a better (or worse) grasp on reality.

Still and even, I followed the adventures of Colonel Canyon every day as a boy. It's not much of a stretch to say the good colonel had as big an impact on my first career decision as my father did... I wanted to BE Steve Canyon, or someone just like him, at the very least.I almost got there...

There's much more of Caniff's artwork at the Air Force Mag link above, but you have to view the article as a PDF.

10 comments:

My favorite strip ever was from a Sunday Steve Canyon back in the early seventies.I may still have it buried somewhere.It involved one of the characters making a clandestined extraction from an unnamed SE Asian jungle, over a period of days, to the point of dehydration, starvation and exhaustion.When said character finally reached civilization, he is hospitalized, debriefed and the the press is given access.The last panel has two reporters talking outside of the hospital room.One reporter asks the other what the character's response was to his question.The other reporter replies, "It sounded like cough, cough."

Everybody was into heavy cynical irony by then, Buck--it's the same reason all the troops in-country laughed at John Wayne's "Green Beret" movie cliche-ridden, simplistic and behind-the-times when it came out (that and the little fact that the ending had the sun setting over the wrong (East) end of the China Sea, lol.)

I'll raise my hand... guilty, as charged, for the cynicism of the times. Now that I have the benefit of old age and hindsight I wonder about just HOW that cynicism concerning the old virtues... self-sacrifice, duty, honor, country... told hold of our country. That's pretty sad, once again: in hindsight.

I credit comic books as being my first art teacher. I copied the art after reading, of course. Milton Caniff was not one of my mainstays. Thanks for sharing the info though. I would love to have been an illustrator/cartoonist back in the day.